Video: Why should I use a slate?

Rich: Hi, my name is Rich Harrington. Robbie: And I am Robbie Carman. Rich: And today we are talking about slates. Now we've brought slates up before in purposes of sync sound, but there is this whole world, it's a big word, a lot of people get scared by it, metadata. Robbie: Yeah, metadata or data about data is essentially just information about what's going on with your shoot, and the cool thing about having all this metadata or information on a slate, Rich, is that hopefully later on you can use it to your advantage in post-production to easily find shots, the scene, the take number, who is running the camera and so on.

This weekly course covers the most common questions videographers encounter when shooting and editing with DSLR cameras, from choosing a frame size and frame rate to understanding moiré. Authors Rich Harrington and Robbie Carman will also help you understand the impacts of compression and the difference between cropped (or micro 4/3rds) and full-sized sensors in cameras, and much more. This continual FAQ guide is a handy way to find the answers to the questions that plague you the most.

Why should I use a slate?

Rich: Hi, my name is Rich Harrington. Robbie: And I am Robbie Carman.Rich: And today we are talking about slates.Now we've brought slates up before in purposes of sync sound, but there is this whole world,it's a big word, a lot of people get scared by it, metadata.Robbie: Yeah, metadata or data about data is essentially just information about what'sgoing on with your shoot, and the cool thing about having all this metadata or informationon a slate, Rich, is that hopefully later on you can use it to your advantage in post-productionto easily find shots, the scene, the take number, who is running the camera and so on.

Rich: A lot of times we are going to get notes back from the field, I like this particulartake or maybe the time of day, we decide to combine two shots together and you are lookingat me and you go, those shots just don't match.Well, sometimes you are going to have information about when was it shot or where was it shot,if you have to go back and do it again.Robbie: Yeah, and my personal attitude is that more information, the better.Documenting your shoot about what's going on and having this information can't reallyhurt you later on in post-production, so I am a big fan of gathering as much informationabout the location, the equipment that was being used, the personnel that was on setor on location, because after all having more data is usually a good thing.

Rich: Yeah, and to that point, we've got two types of slates here as well as an audio recorder,a smart phone, a lot of people are like, oh, I'll just go digital, right.Digital is awesome, we've got digital slates, we've got audio recorders on our phone.The only bad part about digital... Robbie: Batteries die.Rich: Batteries die, exactly, which is why we have a real physical slate here in casethis technology fails or somebody forgets to charge it or you get out there and yourealize, oh, we're running out of battery juice.So it's always good to have that physical fallback.

So we are going to explore how all these things work together.We are going to take a look at the analog slate, the digital slate, we are going totalk about the use of a megaphone or as well as a smartphone, there is lots of pieces here,they all work really, really well.So when we come back, we'll start with the digital.

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